Last week I was sitting a lunch observing my husband, Scott, eat tuna sashimi for lunch. As I was looking at him, a smile crept upon my face & he asked me why I was smiling. I was reminded of a time when we first starting dating and recalled the memory. We had gone on a few dates in Boston to Fenway, Boston Garden, and a American seafood restaurant that he had treated. I wanted to reciprocate, and asked if he wanted to go for sushi. His reply was, “I hate sushi.” So instead we went for cheeseburgers.
After a couple of months, when I was craving sushi, I asked him if he wanted to go out for Japanese food, and he again replied that he hated sushi. As superficial as this is, I will admit that I actually contemplated if I could be in a relationship with this guy and forego eating sushi when I was with him. But what happened next changed our lives.
I asked him one question: “Do you hate sushi because you’ve tried it and don’t like it or because you hate the idea of sushi?” His answer was simple. He had never had sushi, but had heard (from his father) that it was unsafe to eat. From this answer, we could move forward, and I offered to take him out to a place that served safe (lol) food. Luckily, he agreed.
I actually recreated how I was introduced to sushi four years earlier. It starts with cooked sushi rolls such as California rolls & shrimp tempura rolls. And then simply a piece of tuna nigiri and a piece of salmon nigiri. The result was that he loved it. In full disclosure, he is a self-proclaimed “texture” guy meaning that if it has a weird texture, he doesn’t like it. This is an exception.
Fast forward and honestly, Scott requests to eat sushi and sashimi more that I do. And I always think “What if I never asked the right question?” And the conclusion is that I’m so glad that I did as this changed my life forever, and for the better.